The Chair of the Healthy Aging Visual Art Prize is Dr. Julia Henderson, who is overseeing all aspects of the development, planning and implementation of the contest and exhibitions. Dr. Henderson is the co-lead of the Community Engagement and Intersection focus area of the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at UBC, and the Chair of the North American Network in Aging Studies. She is the Co-founder of the community-engaged Creatus Project and associated Anti-ageist Active Access Design Study that focusses on redressing ageism and promoting accessibility for older professionals in the live performing arts.
Dr. Henderson’s program of research focuses on redressing ageism in North American culture. She uses qualitative and mostly arts-based methods to work with older adults on projects that range from collaborative creative engagement with people with lived experience of dementia, to older adult activism, to developing creative accessibility strategies for older adult performers.
Currently, Dr. Henderson partners with Western Gold Theatre (funded by a UBC Partnership Recognition and Exploration Fund) on initiatives that challenge ageism through social media and theatrical performance. Dr. Henderson has published in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre, Theatre Research in Canada, The Thornton Wilder Journal, Canadian Theatre Review, Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Leisure/Loisir, Frontiers in Health Services, and most recently in the volumes Aging Studies and Ecocriticism, and The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging.